My drive back from Poland, where I had visited Wroclaw and the Churches of Peace, brought me on the Berlin Ring Road. I knew that one of the Housing Estates is located close to the Schönefeld Airport, so I looked up its exact location and decided to just stop by. This site is the Gartenstadt Falkenberg, the earliest of the modernist estates (1913). It is nicknamed Tuschkastensiedlung ("Paintbox Estate").

Like the reviewers below have stated about other parts of this serial nomination, this also is ‘just’ a residential area with ordinary people going about their daily business. The main street is the Gartenstadtweg. Here several types of housing can be seen, all in full colour: apartment blocks, free-standing villas and rows of townhouses. All have their own gardens to grow vegetables and flowers. The streets are lined with trees. I'm not sure which of the houses on this street are original, but there are 93 of them according to the nomination dossier.

A sign at the side of the road advertised ‘Do you want to live in a Unesco World Heritage Site? Now for rent: apartments in the 2003 extension of the Gartenstadt. Only 639 EUR per month!’ Obviously not the real thing, but the area, in general, has a very peaceful feel to it due to the abundance of greenery. I wouldn’t mind living there… (maybe ought to look up the local crime rate first).